global warming | ukwatch.net

The Era of Oil Wars

Ellie Keen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:36:35 +0000

Gordon Brown meeting Britain’s oil chiefs to discuss higher North Sea output to bring down prices is prompted by oil prices hitting a record high of $135 a barrel, twice as high as a year ago and a staggering 12 times higher than a decade ago. The well-sourced website petrolprices.com is now predicting that petrol will reach £1.50 a litre by September, just 4 months away. Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets is forecasting “oil prices almost doubling over the next five years”. That would mean $270 a barrel by 2013. It perhaps explains why the government is now strongly backing BP to get a big new slice of the oil drilling licences soon to be issued in Iraq, and – astonishingly – has now also made clear it intends to annex a third of a million square miles of the seabed off Antarctica to pre-empt any rights to the oil it may contain. The fight for oil has begun in earnest.

But is there the oil to go round? The authoritative International Energy Agency foresees an oil supply crunch within 5 years forcing up prices to unprecedented levels and greatly increasing western dependence on Opec. And the oil industry itself in its own report Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, produced by 175 authorities including all the heads of the world’s big oil companies, for the first time predicted that oil and gas may run short by 2015.

The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which half has now been already consumed, while half of the 51 oil-producing countries reported output declines in 2006. Non-Opec production is expected to peak and decline within the next five years, driven mainly by burgeoning demand from China and the US, together with restricted output from Iraq. Then in the following five years Opec’s diminishing spare capacity will probably become increasingly unable to accommodate short-term fluctuations, depending on how fast world demand grows and how extensively Opec invests in new capacity. The latter may well not raise production capacity high enough or quickly enough, whether for political reasons or because internal decision-making is too slow or the security environment too hostile.

There are of course exits from this doom-stricken scenario, though none is at all credible. First, discovery of major new oilfields could alter the picture. However, though billions have been spent on the search for new fields, discovery peaked in the mid-1960s and the last big ones were found in the 1970s. Only Iraq has undeveloped super-giant oilfields – at West Qurna, Majnoon, and East Baghdad – and the capacity to increase production rapidly to 8-10 million barrels a day; but ironically the US invasion, designed to produce this effect, has ruled out this outcome for a long way ahead. Already four-fifths of the world’s oil supply comes from fields discovered before 1970, and even finding a field as large as the world’s current biggest (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) – which is anyway almost inconceivable given the huge improvements in geological knowledge in the last 30 years – would only meet global oil demand for another 10 years.

Another option much touted is a large-scale shift to so-called unconventional oil – the Athabascan tar sands (from Alberta, Canada), extra-heavy oil (from the Orinoco belt in Venezuela), oil shale, and mature source rocks. But the almost insurmountable problem is recoverability, whether poor quality oil (extra-heavy oil), poor quality reservoirs (oil from source rocks), or both (oil shale). Worse, production may be uneconomic because of a very low net energy gain, ie it requires almost as much energy to extract the oil as is made available for subsequent use. And the enormous hike in greenhouse gases generated could produce a turbo climate change effect that would wipe out any benefit from a global post-Kyoto agreement.

But even if supply constraints are ineluctable as the explosion of Chinese growth coincides with falling non-Opec oil production and the beginnings of a slow but remorseless slippage in Opec capacity, the coming crisis could still be eased by significant demand restrictions. Clearly there is substantial room for energy-saving when half the energy generated every day is wasted and when propulsion of an average car is only about 20% efficient, heating of a standard oven only 25%, and electricity generated in some power stations only some 35%. The question, however, is whether improvement can be secured globally on the level and timescale required to push back the crisis more than a few years. Equally, taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels, especially coal, may be crucial, but a decade at least is needed even to test the carbon capture technology in pilot projects, let alone begin to mainstream it. But the most direct means of constraining world demand would be the proposed Rimini protocol, which prescribes that oil-importing countries cut their imports to match the world depletion rate (ie annual production as a percentage of remaining global reserves) now running at about 2% a year. Of course, the fundamental political problem remains that the most powerful oil-hungry countries will not agree. If not Kyoto, why Rimini?

What is most disturbing of all is that the big powers, so far from seeking major adjustments of their energy policies on either the supply or demand fronts or making a major switch into renewables, are actually massively intensifying their competitive struggle short-term for the limited oil reserves left. Despite an unwinnable war in Iraq, the US is still constructing at least five large permanent military bases there in order, according to evidence given to a US Congressional Committee, to control access to Gulf oil, including in Saudi and Iran. As one neocon recently put it, “one of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave”. The US is also trying to force through a new Iraqi oil law that would give western, primarily American, oil multinationals control of Iraqi oilfields for the next 30 years.

The US maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries under cover of the “war on terror” to defend American economic interests, particularly access to oil. The principal objective for the continued existence and expansion of Nato post-cold war is the encirclement of Russia and the pre-emption of China dominating access to oil and gas in the Caspian Sea and Middle East regions. It is only the beginning of the unannounced titanic global resource struggle between the US and China, the world’s largest importers of oil (China overtook Japan in 2003). Islam has been dragged into this tussle because it is in the Islamic world where most of these resources lie, but Islam is only a secondary player. In the case of Russia, the recent pronounced stepping up of western attacks on Putin and claims he is undermining democracy are ultimately aimed at securing a pro-western government there, and access to Russian oil and gas when Russia has more of these two hydrocarbons together than any other country in the world.

The struggle has also spilled over into West Africa, reckoned to hold some 66 billion barrels of oil typically low in sulphur and thus ideal for refining. In 2005 the US imported more oil from the Gulf of Guinea than from Saudi and Kuwait combined, and is expected over the next 10 years to import more oil from Africa than from the Middle East. In step with this, the Pentagon is setting up a new unified military command for the continent named Africom. Conversely, Angola is now China’s main supplier of crude oil, overtaking Saudi Arabia last year. There is no doubt that Africom, which will greatly increase the US military presence in Africa, is aimed at the growing conflict with China over oil supplies.

As Joe Lieberman, former US presidential candidate, put it, efforts by the US and China to use imports to meet growing demand “may escalate competition for oil to something as hot and dangerous as the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union”.

Big Oil's Big Lie

Ellie Keen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:49:32 +0000

Of course, it’s not a crime, and it’s hard to see how, in a free society, it could or should become one. But the culpability of the energy firms the climate scientist James Hansen will indict in his testimony to Congress today is clear. If we fail to stop runaway climate change, it will be largely because of campaigning by oil, coal and electricity companies, and the network of lobbyists, fake experts and thinktanks they have sponsored.

The operation sprang directly from Big Tobacco’s war against science. It has used the same fake experts, the same public relations companies and the same tactics: as I showed in my book Heat, the campaign against action on climate change was partly launched by the tobacco company Philip Morris. But while the tobacco companies’ professional liars were smoked out by a massive class action in the US, the sponsored climate change deniers still have massive influence over public perception. A survey published yesterday by the Observer shows that six out of ten people in Britain agreed that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change.” This is an inaccurate perception, which results from Big Energy’s lobbying.

Almost without exception, the scientists who claim to doubt that manmade climate change is taking place fall into two categories: either they are not qualified in the branch of science they are discussing or they have received money from fossil fuel companies. Of all the self-professed climate “sceptics”, I have been able to find only one – Dr John Christy of the University of Alabama – who has relevant qualifications and who does not appear to have received fees from lobby groups or thinktanks sponsored by the energy companies. But even he has had to admit that the figures on which he based his claims were the results of “errors in the … data”.

The others are the very opposite of sceptics. Many of them are paid to start with a conclusion – that climate change isn’t happening or isn’t important – then to find data and arguments to support it. In most cases, they cherrypick scientific findings; in a few cases, like the fake scientific paper attached to the celebrated Oregon petition, they make them up altogether. But people who don’t understand the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and a pamphlet are taken in. The energy companies’ propaganda campaign is amplified by scientific illiterates in the media, such as Melanie Phillips, Christopher Booker, Nigel Lawson, Alexander Cockburn and the television producer (who made Channel 4’s documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle) Martin Durkin.

I don’t believe that the energy companies should be prosecuted for commissioning the truckload of trash their sponsored experts publish. But their campaign of disinformation must be exposed again and again. Like the tobacco lobbyists, they are not only delaying essential public action; they also create the impression that science is for sale to the highest bidder.

The awful truth is that sometimes it is.

The Price of Business-as-Usual

Ellie Keen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Christian Aid is angry. The British government has just “eviscerated” the Climate Change Bill, claimed the agency.

The Guardian, in contrast, appears relatively delighted. They simply cut and pasted a news agency report from the Press Association, headlined “UK bill to set carbon targets clears first hurdle.”

For some reason, they don’t seem very bothered about analysing the details. Yes, they’ve got a nice little debate going, with critics like ex-environment minister Michael Meacher head-to-head against current minister Phil Woolas, plus some added criticisms from the Lib Dems, the Tories officially congratulating Labour, not to mention several Tory backbenchers opposing the whole idea of action to prevent dangerous climate change. But there’s a very important point, mentioned, alluded to, but not really elaborated on, a point that at this time the public sorely needs to understand.

I haven’t seen any other reporting on what the government has just done with this Bill, and would be interested to see how the Bill is portrayed (if it is portrayed beyond the above meagre pickings).

But Christian Aid puts it very clearly. What matters, is not so much what is being proposed, but what the govt is studiously avoiding:

“Christian Aid said it was deeply disappointed at the Government’s refusal, revealed yesterday by Phil Woolas MP, Minister of State for the Environment at the start of the Bill’s second reading in Parliament, to include a target for cutting UK carbon emissions of 80 percent over 1990 levels by 2050.

It said the removal from the Bill of an undertaking to ensure that UK emissions of greenhouse gases do not exceed the level necessary to limit global temperature rises to not more than 2C above pre industrial levels would fatally undermine the credibility of the UK’s climate change policies.
...

‘Only carbon emission cuts of 80% and above will keep global temperatures below 2oC. That target is essential as beyond 2C the effects of climate change such as drought, floods and disease will become rampant.’ “

Decisions, decisions. So the govt has decided that there’s no need to worry about the two degree limit (which is bad enough).

In fact, and we need to be very clear on this, at current rates of increase of emissions, where are we likely to be over the coming decades? Well, the Guardian isn’t exactly unfamiliar with this, given their summary of Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees, which outlines the findings of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers:

“The impacts of two degrees warming are bad enough, but far worse is in store if emissions continue to rise. Most importantly, 3C may be the ‘tipping point’ where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. The centre of this predicted disaster is the Amazon, where the tropical rainforest, which today extends over millions of square kilometres, would burn down in a firestorm of epic proportions.

“Computer model projections show worsening droughts making Amazonian trees, which have no evolved resistance to fire, much more susceptible to burning. Once this drying trend passes a critical threshold, any spark could light the firestorm which destroys almost the entire rainforest ecosystem. Once the trees have gone, desert will appear and the carbon released by the forests’ burning will be joined by still more from the world’s soils. This could boost global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC – tipping us straight into the four-degree world.

“Three degrees alone would see increasing areas of the planet being rendered essentially uninhabitable by drought and heat. In southern Africa, a huge expanse centred on Botswana could see a remobilisation of old sand dunes, much as is projected to happen earlier in the US west. This would wipe out agriculture and drive tens of millions of climate refugees out of the area. The same situation could also occur in Australia, where most of the continent will now fall outside the belts of regular rainfall.

“With extreme weather continuing to bite – hurricanes may increase in power by half a category above today’s top-level Category Five – world food supplies will be critically endangered. This could mean hundreds of millions – or even billions – of refugees moving out from areas of famine and drought in the sub-tropics towards the mid-latitudes. In Pakistan, for example, food supplies will crash as the waters of the Indus decline to a trickle because of the melting of the Karakoram glaciers that form the river’s source. Conflicts may erupt with neighbouring India over water use from dams on Indus tributaries that cross the border.

“In northern Europe and the UK, summer drought will alternate with extreme winter flooding as torrential rainstorms sweep in from the Atlantic – perhaps bringing storm surge flooding to vulnerable low-lying coastlines as sea levels continue to rise. Those areas still able to grow crops and feed themselves, however, may become some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, besieged by millions of climate refugees from the south.”

Yet after all the fanfare and jumping around and big words and loud promises, when all the racket about being Green has died down, the govt reneges on its own promises. What a surprise. Not.

Given that Brown did the same last year when he “U-turned” on pledges to follow EU targets to generate 20 per cent of Europe’s energy from renewable sources, as also noted by the Guardian, to its credit (and even the Telegraph).

Why?

Because, according to both papers, the Business Secretary John Hutton was worried about pissing off the Ministry of Defence, an “excessive” cost of about £4billion of investment (we won’t worry about the jobs that could be created in the process, nor the £205 billion of taxpayers money the govt has poured unchecked and unaccounted for into Iraq up to 2007, probably subsidising corrupt defence contractors, that’s £6.5 billion for this year alone), as well as conflicting with the petrol-friendly nuclear power lobby.

This Bill is a fraud.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Ellie Keen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:57:50 +0000

As climate change increasingly becomes a defining political theme for the 21st Century, coal, oil and gas companies have not suffered the existential crisis that might have been expected. Instead, they are betting on a technological solution to the problem, in the form of carbon capture and storage. But, ask Gabriele von Goerne and David Santillo, how safe is the technology?

To avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, which would place millions of people and the natural systems on which they depend at risk, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by at least 80% by the middle of this century. This, and more, can be achieved by a combination of greater energy efficiencies, phasing out the use of coal and switching from fossil fuels to renewable energies. But this vision of the future is not one that fossil fuel companies can accept. Led by the coal industry, those companies are insisting that carbon capture and storage (CCS) can square the circle between everincreasing sales of their products and a major decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

The stakes could not be higher. If at any point in the future the technology failed, resulting in either gradual or sudden leakage of stored carbon dioxide (CO2), the world could be faced with substantial, unexpected greenhouse gas emissions about which little or nothing could be done, as well as the potential for severe direct impacts on ecosystems in the vicinity of such leaks. Given that the storage would have to remain intact for many centuries, an extremely high level of confidence in the system's integrity would be necessary before proceeding with CCS.

Storage science shortfall

CCS technology is still very much in development. Its principle sounds simple – CO2 that would usually be emitted to the atmosphere is captured at the power plant, transported and injected into deep geological formations where, according to theory, it is stored safely for a long period of time. But in reality, the process turns out to be highly complex, not least because the scale of both sources and storage formations are so vast, and knowledge and experience so limited.

Scenarios indicate that a single 1000MW coal-fired power plant, producing 8.6 million tons of CO2 per year for 30 years, could generate an underground CO2 plume which, within a further 20-50 years, could extend over an area of between 200 and 360 km2, depending on the type and thickness of the storage formation1. Continuous injection of CO2 will also cause formation pressures to rise over large areas, not only in the plume area but well beyond.

Simulations indicate that after 30 years of injection, a pressure increase of 1 bar could extend over an area of about 2500 km2,2 which will modify the local mechanical stress field and could cause deformation of the surrounding geological formation itself. This would make it far more likely that the cap rock could be compromised, particularly where there are any existing weaknesses, such as faults or fracture zones, providing pathways for CO2, and, in the case of saline aquifers, metalladen brines to escape to the biosphere.

Cap rock integrity is therefore an essential key for storing CO2 safely in geological formations. However, largescale injection of CO2 will induce a range of strongly coupled physical and chemical processes, including multiphase fluid flow, changes in effective stress and solute transport, and even chemical reactions between fluids and minerals in the geological formation. The more impurities present in the CO2 stream, the more complex and unpredictable the system inevitably becomes.

To date, most risk assessments and models assume that only pure CO2 will be stored. In reality, this is very unlikely to be the case. Less-pure CO2 waste streams, also containing other substances like SOx, NOx, hydrogen sulphide or even mercury, are significantly cheaper to generate (albeit with the possibility of higher transport costs), requiring less technological investment and energy to separate from a flue gas, coal gasification process, etc3. This economic incentive makes it likely that some companies will choose to store mixed gases.

Keeping carbon captured

Yet these mixtures and impurities could have a major impact on storage integrity. Mineral trapping of CO2 in a storage formation is hampered by hydrogen sulphide (H2S), for example. Although it has been suggested by some that large amounts of co-injected H2S should not prove problematic, interaction with the rock formation cannot be ruled out. Moreover, if conditions in a geological formation allow sulfur to be oxidized, or if CO2 was to be costored with SO2, very different patterns of pH distribution and mineral alteration would be expected compared to those arising from CO2 injection alone. Mineral alteration can lead to significant changes in porosity, and hence permeability, which could modify the fluid flow4. SO2 is much more corrosive in the presence of water than CO2 , such that the mobilization of metals in groundwater and overlying soils or sediments may be higher, leading to a greater risk of trace metal contamination in the surrounding environment5.

Even if only pure CO2 was injected, it could still induce dissolution of minerals, especially iron-bearing oxides, that could mobilize toxic trace metals6 and ultimately create pathways through the sealing rock for CO2, displaced brines and other associated substances7. Although current geophysical techniques allow broad identification and characterisation of fractures in a rock formation, relatively fine (open or sealed) fractures may remain undetected at the time of injection, representing possible pathways for CO2 sometime in the future.

A much more obvious and, perhaps, immediate pathway for leakage are the wells themselves, whether those used for injection or others in the vicinity which have, at some point, connected with the formation. The potential for leakage of CO2 through existing and abandoned wells is particularly relevant in regions that have been intensively explored and exploited for hydrocarbon reserves, such as in the North Sea. Although well completion and abandonment practices have evolved considerably over time, even wells drilled and abandoned by today's standards are unlikely to be entirely resistant to the corrosive effects of CO2 that comes in contact with water.

In short, the risks and uncertainties surrounding CCS are significant, manifold and complex. Despite assurances from industry and government, leakage of CO2 from storage reservoirs cannot be ruled out. Although the IPCC regards the risks to be low, it is vital to remember that problems may occur long after injection has ended, well beyond the timeframes over which the efficacy and safety of CCS has so far been demonstrated. The big question decisionmakers need to ask themselves is not just whether they want to take the risk, but whether it is responsible and sustainable for them to pass the burden of a continued reliance on fossil fuels to future generations.

The choice is real – CCS is not unavoidable – if only they put their efforts and money into renewable energies and energy efficiencies, the real solutions to climate change.

Dr Gabriela von Goerne is a geologist working with the Climate & Energy Unit of Greenpeace’s office in Hamburg, Germany. Dr David Santillo is a marine biologist and environmental chemist working with the Greenpeace Research Laboratories, based at the University of Exeter in the UK

1 Benson S., Hoversten M., Gasperikova E., Haines M. (2004): Monitoring protocols and life-cycle costs for geologic storage of carbon dioxide. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control technologies, Vancouver, Canada

2 Pruess K., Xu T., Apps J., Garcia J. (2003): Numerical modeling of aquifer disposal of CO2. SPE Journal, 49-60

3 Andersson K., Johnsson F., Strömberg L. (2003): An 865 Mwe lignite-fired power plant with CO2 capture – a technical feasibility study. VGB Conference “Power Plants in Competition – Technology, Operation and Environment”, Cologne.

4 Xu T., Apps J., Pruess K., Yamamoto H. (2007): Numerical modeling of injection and mineral trapping of CO2 with H2S and SO2 in a sandstone formation. Chemical Geology xx (2007) xxx-xxx

5 IPCC (2005): Special report on Carbon dioxide capture and storage. p250

6 Schütt T., Wigand M., Spangenberg E. (2005): Geophysical and geochemical effects of supercritical CO2 on sandstones. In: Carbon dioxide capture for storage in deep geologic formations (Eds.: D.C.Thomas, S.M. Benson) Vol.2, Chapter 7, 767-786

7 Kharaka Y., Cole D., Hovorka S., Gunter W., Knauss K., Freifeld B. (2006): Gas-water-rock interactions in Frio Formation following CO2 injection: Implications for the storage of greenhouse gases in sedimentary basins. Geology, Vol.34, 577-580

Newcastle University Pushes Clean Coal

Ellie Keen — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:28:57 +0000

Simon Cunich
10 May 2008

“[It] would be imprudent to tip the winners in the race for low emission technologies”, wrote Barney Glover, University of Newcastle deputy vice-chancellor, in an April 10 letter defending the university’s research in so-called clean coal technologies.

“In the race to find a solution to the problem of climate change, clean coal may have a future role”, he wrote.

His letter was in response to a statement presented to the university by students at the Fossil Fools’ Day protest on April 1. The statement criticised the university’s role as a partner of the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development, an Australia-wide research partnership which aims to “optimise the contribution of coal to a sustainable future”.

Glover is on the board of the CCSD.

The students’ statement argued that the university “cannot provide independent research into climate change solutions while it is a CCSD partner alongside some of the world’s largest mining corporations (Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Xstrata Coal)”.

According to the statement, between 2001 and 2007 the university spent more than $3.6 million in cash and in-kind contributions to the CCSD. Meanwhile, Newcastle University joins many of the same corporations as a partner of the Cooperative Research Centre for Mining.

As well as mining companies, the CCSD also brings together the University of Queensland, the University of NSW, Macquarie University, and Curtin University of Technology. The statement argued that the CCSD “is being driven by the coal industry’s interests rather than a genuine response to climate change”.

According to the vast majority of climate scientists, drastic changes have to be made within the next 10 years to keep global warming under 2°C (above pre-industrial levels). According to Friends of the Earth, warming above 2-2.4° C would lead to further unavoidable rises, taking temperatures beyond the range of the last million years.

The change necessary to avoid this, the statement argued, would involve a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions of 50-80% by 2050. This would require “a rapid shift away from the use of coal and other dirty fossil fuels for energy production”.

Clean coal research is based on the idea that we can continue to extract and burn coal but bury the carbon emissions underground through an as yet unproven technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Even if the technology is successful the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has assessed that “the majority of CCS deployment will occur in the second half of this century”, which is too late to make the necessary reductions to keep global warming below two degrees.

“The expectation that CCS technology will be successful in the future cannot be used to justify the expansion of the coal industry today … Rather, as long as clean coal remains unviable, the mining, burning and exporting of coal must be drastically reduced”, the statement said.

If the university is serious about developing solutions to climate change it should call for coal to be phased out until clean coal is proven viable, if it ever is. A transition away from coal is possible because, in contrast to CCS, renewable energy technologies already exist.

The statement called on the university to prioritise research and development of renewable energy technologies. “[These technologies] could be further developed and implemented on a far greater scale with the support of the government and institutions like our University.”

The university conducts renewable energy and clean coal research at its Priority Research Centre for Energy. However, the centre is unlikely to “win the race” to solve climate change with its current inadequate aim to “develop technologies that can reduce greenhouse gases internationally by 2% and nationally by 20% by 2030”.

Universities must play a central role in developing responses to climate change. This requires more public funding and independence from coal corporations that are doing their best to preserve business-as-usual.

To Fly or Not to Fly

Ellie Keen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:53:44 +0000

The plane is over the English Channel when the pilot’s voice crackles over the loudspeakers.

‘Just to warn you that there’s been a bit of trouble at Heathrow with people protesting about the impact of air travel on climate change. Nothing to worry about, but when we land you may see a bigger police presence at the airport than you would normally expect.’

The tone is jocular and clearly intended to draw us all together into a kind of community of ‘sensible’ travellers who might have to suffer the disruption of ‘extremist’ campaigners.

So what exactly am I doing here, in August 2007, given that I feel a much greater sense of kinship with the Climate Camp protesters down below than with the pilot’s cosy set of assumptions? It’s a good question. I’m on my way back with my family from a holiday in Italy. Last time we went, a few years ago, we drove there and back, via Luxembourg and Switzerland, taking our time and making many stop-offs on the way to break the journey. This time when we booked, almost a year in advance, we knew our time would be squeezed between work commitments and being back for our daughter’s exam results. So, not without qualms, we took advantage of ludicrously cheap flights that would get us there within a couple of hours rather than a couple of days.

I tell you this to indicate my starting-point when I began to research this magazine – for all that I bike to work, compost like crazy and am vegetarian, I am far from being in the environmental vanguard, and certainly don’t feel able to lecture people about what they should or should not do.

Given this, I was not exactly burning to pick up the topic of Ethical Travel. I had no problem considering the effects of tourism on the Majority World. But since most tourism depends on air travel I knew I was likely to find myself in the unenviable position of having to offer readers some guidance as to when flying is acceptable and when it isn’t.

And the more I sounded people out, the more my suspicions were confirmed. People are concerned and looking for guidance on an issue which has leapt to public attention in recent years – at least in Britain, where the debate about flying rages much hotter than it does in Australasia or North America.

Mind-boggling statistics

My earliest research left me shocked by the statistics on aviation emissions. Put simply, jet aircraft not only emit carbon from vast quantities of kerosene fuel, they also do it at high altitudes, where it has a much greater warming effect than it would in the lower atmosphere. In addition, jets emit other greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide and water vapour (‘contrails’). The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the net effect of all these emissions from jet aircraft at 2.7 times the carbon consumed in the fuel. The chart below shows that an individual’s share of carbon emitted on a return flight from London to New York exceeds the carbon used up by a full year’s modest driving of an average car.

How such statistics are calculated is always a contentious issue. But the exact numbers are less interesting than the broad-brushstroke comparisons: you can easily dump more carbon into the atmosphere from one return flight than from the gas and electricity you use in your house for an entire year. This was, to be frank, a quite mind-boggling discovery for me, which couldn’t help but challenge my attitude to flying.

Travel has played an enormous part in my life. I cannot easily conceive what kind of person I would be had I not been able to board an airplane. But I do recognize that the profound implications of climate change (and the fight to prevent it) are going to force us all to take stock of our lives, to challenge all our assumptions. Just how far, I wonder, are we prepared to go in challenging the flying culture?

My tentative proposal to the NI editorial team was that we should oppose the expansion of aviation – especially the development of new airports or runways – and encourage readers to reduce the amount they flew. But we should stop well short of calling for an end to all holiday flights.

A great deal of heat was generated in the discussion that ensued, but not a lot of light. It soon became plain that the issue of flying is a particularly thorny one, in which emotions are perhaps too readily engaged. And this was despite the fact that, perhaps surprisingly, there was no-one in the room arguing that the magazine should rule out flying for leisure or experience altogether. One or two people argued that it would be so impossible to pin down reliable estimates of the emissions of various forms of transport that we would be treading on dodgy ground even to enter the flying debate.

Adam Ma’anit

I DEFINITELY AGREE with the need to deal with aviation’s impact on climate change. My worry is about the focus on individual consumption, on individuals taking flights. I think the emphasis needs to go back towards political, economic and environmental policies. Too much of the flying debate is about individual one-upmanship and not about real substantive change. It’s natural for the environmental movement to go down that path because it’s easier to appeal to their base – environmentally minded folk who will accept the wisdom of flying less and peer-pressure each other – but the movement shouldn’t shy away from the difficult questions.

Lifestyle politics may be a hit with the hairshirt crowd, but it’s small fry compared to the huge socio-political changes needed to avert the worst excesses of climate change. Just as telling people to eat better won’t solve the obesity crisis, so too will the ‘you fly, we die’ message fall on deaf ears. And let’s not forget the importance of building up the alternatives. Telling people to fly less and travel by train instead when the rail system in many countries is so mind-boggingly expensive, over-crowded and unreliable is hardly a convincing argument. Rather than solely appealing to people’s better consciences, let’s focus our energies on the big wins that can be made with modest political will.

Aviation’s growth is very worrying and that does need to be curtailed. The big target is short-haul flights to destinations that could easily and comfortably be serviced by rail, bus or ferry. But those services need to run well, they need to be just as heavily scrutinized for their environmental impacts and they should be reasonably affordable and safe. At the moment, they’re often not, so it’s no wonder people take to the skies. But not flying has become an iconic badge of environmental commitment and I think that’s misguided.

If there were the political will to do something about climate change so much could be done in so little time and aviation would play a relatively small role in reducing the global footprint. For example, if government said tomorrow we’re going to ban all electronic devices with standby mode it would reduce electricity consumption by a huge amount at a stroke. How many people factor the standby mode into their purchasing decisions? Not many. But if you deal with it at a macro level you actually take it out of the equation.

Same with government-sponsored housing insulation, combined heat and power units for residential blocks, support for micro-renewables. Stopping the war would deliver massive carbon savings and free up resources that could be used to steer us away from climate disaster. There are lots of things that simply can’t be done at an individual level and have to be done by society as a whole – reining in corporate power and wasteful energy transmission, decentralizing energy grids and promoting renewables, stopping subsidies of fossil fuels, ending aviation’s tax-free fuel ride. And that’s just for starters… There is so much we can do now. So let’s stop the incessant navel-gazing and agonizing over our personal carbon ‘footprints’ and build the momentum for real change.

Mark Lynas

It’s worth looking at work travel as well as holidays because that’s probably the largest component of most people’s carbon footprint. When people fly for their work, are the ethical considerations their own responsibility or their employer’s?

None of these things are completely black and white and it’s finding a way through the greys that has become an ethical minefield. There’s a cultural value shift going on and things haven’t quite settled yet when it comes to what’s moral and what isn’t. But in the mean time there are a lot of accusations and counter-accusations.

Is there a danger that focusing individuals on their own carbon footprint is a distraction?

You need to know where you stand in terms of what your contribution is to the collective problem. Of course, simply doing things at an individual level is not going to be enough – it’s got to be a collective approach to a collective problem and that comes down to politics, to building a movement. That’s more important than what you do at home but you’ve got to do both – they’re complementary.

When a right-wing group in the US got hold of Al Gore’s [massive] electricity bill it played well for them because it sowed cynicism and that in turn has an effect in paralyzing social action. I wrote defending Gore because it does strike me that this ‘green hypocrisy’ argument about individual behaviour has gone too far. Some people’s aggregated impact on the climate should be seen as positive despite their air miles.

I make the calculation – we all do. And it’s not just flying, though that has become symbolic because of the big numbers attached to it; it’s everything – every time you turn on the heating in your house it’s worth a certain amount of CO2.

But flying consumes much more carbon even than heating…

It does, but only when you look at it from an individual point of view. When you look at it from an aggregate point of view, the flight component of a national carbon budget is still very small because most people don’t take trips to New York. The biggest source of carbon is still space heating, which is a lot less interesting but is much more important than flying. On the other hand, flying is a relatively easy thing not to do. Here in Wolvercote [his village] we’re going low carbon and we’ve found that most behaviour hasn’t really changed except that people have been taking fewer holiday flights.

Don’t you find it problematic, saying people shouldn’t fly when you’ve travelled so much yourself?

I can’t imagine how I would have been had I not spent a lot of my life in the South. I’m happy to rule out future holiday travel for myself – I’d felt yucky about being in places as a tourist for a long time, so that’s easily done. But it’s such a big sacrifice for other people to make and that’s why I think aviation is the one thing for which we need a ‘technofix’. We’ve got a totally globalized world with families all over the place and you just can’t unpick all the threads.

The low-hanging fruit is insulating your loft [attic]; stopping aviation is the highest-hanging fruit there is in terms of the bang people get for their carbon buck.

Say to the industry: ‘Look, you’ve got 15 years to do this or you go out of business’ and I think they’d come up with something. There has to be a role for technological innovation and Manhattan Project-type approaches to this.

George Monbiot

It’s possible to have a technological effect on almost every other area of climate change apart from aviation. You could run almost the entire energy system on renewable power if you did it in the right way. Aviation is the one area for which there is no available technological solution in the foreseeable future. We’re not likely to see battery-powered jetliners.

It’s not just a question of blocking future airport expansion; we have to reduce what’s already there. We have to cut aviation emissions by 95 per cent if we’re going to keep overall emissions to the level we need to. That means people can fly only 5 per cent of the amount they are now – and that’s a maximum.

People shouldn’t be flying for leisure or tourism purposes at all. They also shouldn’t be flying for business. If you’ve got a pressing family obligation, a relative who’s sick or dying, then fair enough. And if you’re doing something important with human rights or raising awareness of the environmental threat and there’s no other way of getting there, you might be able to justify it. But even then you have to think very carefully because it’s going to be rare that the importance of the work will outweigh the damage done by the flight.

What about damage done to communities in the Majority World that are currently dependent on tourism?

I do accept that some communities are going to be hit hard by this. But you have to set that against the enormous and much greater damage that will be done to other communities all over the world by climate change. We have to make it a priority to help those communities and countries to develop better ways of surviving and thriving that do not depend upon transporting 150 pounds of human halfway across the planet and back.

What would the world be like without the intercultural exchanges that derive from air travel?

Cross-cultural international connections don’t depend entirely on flying. You can travel by boat or by train almost anywhere – it just takes a lot more time. So travelling without flying is still possible.

And in terms of bringing about change, it isn’t really necessary to travel to become an internationalist. At the time of the Make Poverty History campaign most of the people in the West who became deeply concerned about Africa had never visited there but had been moved by what they had seen on television. You don’t become an internationalist by travelling – just as travelling in itself doesn’t make you an internationalist.

You started as a travel writer, though – you’ve benefited in all kinds of ways from international travel that have helped make you the person you are. How can you deny those benefits to young people now?

I do feel bad that I’m having to say to young people now that they cannot have the opportunities I had for guilt-free experience of other lands and cultures. But there’s no alternative. That experience of travel is simply not available to people now. It’s another example of how the sins of one generation have been handed to the next generation who have to pay the price.

There was also an argument that for the New Internationalist to concentrate its attention on individual behaviour – when and whether people should be travelling by plane – would be a mistake. There are much more important battles to be fought than this in the war on climate change, ran this strand of thought, than encouraging people to think about their ‘carbon footprint’. I invited one of my editorial colleagues, Adam Ma’anit, to lay out this position (see box, above).

There is no doubt that the primary need is for governments, rather than individuals, to take action.

Climate change is the greatest issue of our time, yet politicians the world over continue to funk it, fearing that if they derail the globalized consumer bandwagon it will cost them their jobs. Given how huge is the task in front of us, the primary requirement has to be to campaign, to do all we can to change the political landscape so that it reflects the real (planet-)burning issues rather than the pre-eminent concern with the dollar in our pocket.

But I still felt it was important to include in the magazine some recognition of the dilemma faced by individual readers concerned about the ethics of flying in an overheating world. Those of us who try to reduce or constrain our carbon footprint are not likely to be distracted from campaigning for the big-picture political changes. One can reinforce the other. Don’t we all feel much more comfortable campaigning for a cause if we are doing our bit? That way at least we can’t be charged with hypocrisy. And our own individual actions may have a ripple effect, whether by inspiring others or by contributing to a statistical trend. Changing our lifestyle could reinforce pressure on politicians to pull us out of this tailspin. After all, we know more clearly than ever that every kilogram of carbon we propel into the atmosphere is doing some very dirty work.

Consulting the oracles

One of the main proponents of the ‘carbon footprint’ way of looking at this problem is Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, Six Degrees and Carbon Calculator: Easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

When I met Mark, he was just back from a mammoth journey by boat to Norway. ‘It took 10 days – it was a disaster,’ he said ruefully. ‘If I’d done it in a plane trip in a day it would have been a hell of a lot easier than dragging the whole family out there for 10 days. You can go a bit too far in terms of being puritan on this. Mind you, it always plays well because people always ask how you got there. And it’s nice to be able to say: “Well, train and boat!” It even makes headlines in the papers because people don’t expect it.’

While he has ruled out holiday flights for himself, he readily acknowledges the moral complexity of the issue – as well as stressing that he too sees individual effort as secondary to the vital job of building a movement that will shift governments. And he hankers after a technofix (see box, below), even though, he added: ‘George will kill me for saying so.’

The George in question is Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and author of Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning. The chapter of Heat on aviation (‘Love Miles’) lays out very starkly the damage done by air travel – and the impossibility of meeting any meaningful emissions targets if we continue our love affair with it.

‘A 90-per-cent cut in carbon emissions means the end of distant foreign holidays, unless you are prepared to take a long time getting there… It means that journeys around the world must be reserved for visiting the people you love, and that they will require both slow travel and the saving up of carbon rations… If you fly, you destroy other people’s lives.’

Ulp. You can’t get much more categorical than that. Reading my interview with George (see box, overleaf), you might wonder why I didn’t ask him the most obvious follow-up question: how many times have you yourself flown somewhere in the last year? Actually I didn’t need to ask him – he was so primed for that question that he misheard one of my others and answered that he has taken two flights in the last 18 months, both to climate-change events where he judged that he could make more of a difference by attending in person than by not flying.

I was more concerned to probe how he, who began as a travel writer and has benefited in all kinds of ways from experiencing other countries and cultures, feels able to say that young people now should not avail themselves of the same opportunities. His answer is pretty much that, however bad he feels about it, the problem is so huge and so all-trumping that there is simply no alternative.

I cannot bring myself to say the same. As I write, my daughter is experiencing her first day of teaching in a village in Malawi, having just spent a week of ‘orientation’ in the capital, Lilongwe. I am proud that she has chosen to spend her gap year before university working in Africa. What she learns about the world and its injustices and inequalities will reverberate through her entire life and will give her a connection with Malawi, and with Africa as a whole, that no amount of book reading or film watching could have achieved. Should I really have said to her, at a time when the rest of the world seems to be leaping on a plane at the drop of a hat to sun themselves on a beach or to go shopping, that she should forego the whole experience because we have just begun to understand the climate-changing contribution of aviation? I don’t think so.

What would happen in a no-fly world?

What would happen at New Internationalist if we introduced a no-flying policy? The issue has already caused some soul-searching within the co-operative. People travelling to the Frankfurt Book Fair, for example, have had to weigh the environmental impact against the cost (since the advent of budget airlines, ridiculously enough, it is actually cheaper to fly from Britain to Germany than to go by train) and the significant extra time involved. Even if a company has a policy that supports (and is prepared to pay for) an employee wishing to go overland, there are often family or work reasons why that person is loath to be away longer than need be.

Given that we have editors in Canada, Australia and Holland, and that we focus on the concerns of the Majority World, eschewing flying altogether would not look to be an option for us as an organization. Certainly the need for editors to be in touch with the realities of everyday life in Africa, Asia and Latin America – on which the magazine’s reputation stands – depends upon their being able to hear ordinary people’s testimonies first hand rather than just relying on printed reports or local journalists.

And New Internationalist is, after all, only the tip of the ‘One World community’ iceberg, which has been founded upon international travel in both directions – on people visiting and migrating to our own countries from far-flung locations, and on our learning from and adjusting to other peoples and cultures.

What would happen to a world in which the only people who travelled by plane were those most committed to its rapacious exploitation? Would airways become the de facto province of the most unscrupulous corporations? Besides, where is the sense in rejecting one aspect of international aviation (tourism) while accepting other aspects (air-freighted goods and foodstuffs, air mail and so on)?

No more new runways

But in the context of an ever-warming world, if we continue to fly for our pleasure and education, we need to ensure that such tourism is not itself damaging, and that it genuinely benefits the host communities at the other end. In the articles that follow I’ll look at what is wrong with most tourism now and whether more sustainable forms of travel that benefit local communities are actually possible.

It also means we have to increase pressure on policy-makers to contain and reduce air travel. Governments all too readily point the finger at individuals rather than demonstrating leadership on the issue. I encountered an example of this recently when, at a Christmas party, I got talking to a civil servant working on transport issues. I was explaining why I thought the British Government’s intention to build a third runway at Heathrow to meet anticipated demand was the purest folly. ‘It’s not up to the Government to take a lead on this issue,’ he said, ‘it’s up to individuals to stop taking advantage of cheap flights.’

As an evasion of responsibility, this takes some beating. Yet it mirrors the approach of most Western governments, which simply put a blind eye to the telescope and continue to chase economic growth whatever the environmental cost. Pointing to booming demand, they plan for new runways and new airports that will soon fill to capacity just like the extra lane for cars on an expressway. As a result, air travel is growing at a rate of some five per cent a year, meaning that air passenger kilometres are set to triple by 2030.¹

Air travel urgently needs to be contained – and physical limits (not enough runways to meet demand) are actually a very practical, sensible method of containment. It also doesn’t take an expert to see that the current convenient practice of excluding international air travel from all national emissions targets is absurdly ostrich-like. Besides, the boom in air travel cannot be accounted for by ‘ordinary hard-working people taking their one holiday a year’, which is the routine claim of the media and the travel industry. British Government statistics show that 62 per cent of adults did not make even one return flight in 2006. Among the richest 20 per cent of the population, 61 per cent took one or more return flights. Only four per cent of people took four or more flights.²

So even in the rich world we are talking about a tiny minority of people who may be flying an insane amount.

The spread that follows this article suggests ‘Ten steps to reduce flying’ – and some of these will affect only that tiny minority. But others will apply to you and me as well, because even if the primary focus has to be on forcing governments into action, we still need to do our individual bit.

In a way, putting this issue together has been a gesture in this direction since, three trips to London by train and bus aside, I have made a point of avoiding travelling (always, depressingly, the most ethical course of action of all). On the home front, my family has already decided to holiday this year in Cornwall, on the English coast, rather than further afield. But, on the other hand, the following year we have long planned to revisit friends and familiar places in Canada – we lived in Toronto for a year in the mid-1990s. And now my brother’s family is on the verge of emigrating to Australia – without one or other of us flying we would never see each other again.

It’s a tangled web, as this article – if it has done nothing else – has made plain. Good luck to all of you as you try to sort out what you think about it.

Stop the biofuels bandwagon

JamieSW — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:48:16 +0000

The tide of public and expert opinion has been turning inexorably against biofuels in recent months. First news began to leak out about hungry Mexicans protesting about rising corn prices, as more and more of the global harvest was siphoned off for ethanol. Then studies by scientists confirmed that all current biofuels are worse – some by an order of magnitude – in greenhouse emissions terms than conventional mineral petrol and diesel.

Now the government’s chief scientist has come out strongly against biofuels, again because of the long-term threat they pose to our food supply. There’s only one problem: the UK and Europe still have targets to massively ramp up biofuel use. These targets were set prematurely, when governments enthusiastically jumped at the chance to encourage the use of so-called renewable fuels which offered the promise of allowing people to keep driving while not destroying the climate.

Unfortunately, the celebrations were premature. We now know that biofuels release far more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels because of the emissions that are caused through deforestation and agriculture in their production. We know also, as Professor Beddington emphasised in this week’s lecture, that there simply isn’t enough land space to feed a growing world population if valuable carbohydrates from staple food crops are burned in cars. The oft-repeated statistic that it takes a year’s worth of food for one person to fill the petrol tank of the average 4×4 is reason enough to abandon this failed enterprise.

Now is the time to act, before the biofuels mistakes of the past get compounded by the EU’s rush to prematurely set targets for their increased use. The case is very simple: meeting the EU’s targets on biofuels use – of 5.75% by 2010 – will dramatically worsen both carbon emissions and the food supply crisis. The targets must be abandoned immediately.

Gordon Brown should listen carefully to Professor Beddington’s advice, and act on it. The government must quickly abandon our national targets for biofuels use, and urge its EU partners to remove the target across the entirety of Europe. Much damage has already been done to the rainforests of Indonesia as a result of rising demand for palm oil as a feedstock for biodiesel. We know that there is no such thing as “sustainable” palm oil, because any rise in demand will lead to further encroachment into these unique forests.

Europe should offer Indonesia financial assistance to protect its remaining areas of tropical forest, instead of adding to the pressure for their destruction through biofuels demand. Estimates vary, but a few billion euros would go a long way to preserving what is not only the last surviving habitat of the orang-utan but also a vital store of standing carbon.

In the longer-term, European politicians need to face up to the fact that the future of road transport is far more likely to be electric than liquid fuelled. Already Israel is planning the installation of a network which will allow electric cars – charged with renewable energy from solar power – to travel the whole country.

No one is arguing that research on second-generation biofuels, which may be able to produce fuel more efficiently without harming food supplies, should be stopped. But more research is needed to study their potential ecological impacts before governments again get too enthusiastic. The lesson from the biofuels debacle is clear: look before you leap.

Juggle a few of these numbers, and it makes economic sense to kill people

JamieSW — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:51:22 +0000

This is a column about how good intentions can run amok. It tells the story of how an honourable, intelligent man set out to avert environmental disaster and ended up accidentally promoting the economics of the slave trade. It shows how human lives can be priced and exchanged for goods and services.

The story begins in a village a few miles to the west of London. The British government proposes to flatten Sipson in order to build a third runway for Heathrow airport. The public consultation is about to end, but no one doubts that the government has made up its mind.

Its central case is that the economic benefits of building a third runway outweigh the economic costs. The extra capacity, the government says, will deliver a net benefit to the UK economy of £5bn(1). The climate change the runway will cause costs £4.8bn(2), but this is dwarfed by the profits to be made.

There is plenty of evidence suggesting that the government’s numbers are wrong. A new analysis by the environmental consultancy CE Delft shows that the official figures overestimate both the number of jobs the runway will generate and the value brought to the United Kingdom by extra business passengers(3). In an excoriating article in the Guardian last week, Professor Paul Ekins demonstrated that the government has rigged the cost of carbon(4). (Delightfully, the web address for the consultation document ends completecondoc.pdf.) But while the runway’s opponents don’t like the results, most people seem to agree that weighing up economic costs and benefits is a sensible method of making this decision. The problem, they argue, is that the wrong figures have been used.

When Sir Nicholas Stern published his study of the economics of climate change, environmentalists (myself included) lined up to applaud him: he had given us the answer we wanted. He showed that stopping runaway climate change would cost less than failing to prevent it. But because his report was so long, few people bothered to find out how he had achieved this result. It took me a while, but by the time I reached the end I was horrified.

On one side of Stern’s equation are the costs of investing in new technologies (or not investing in old ones) to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from rising above a certain level. These can reasonably be priced in pounds or dollars. On the other side are the costs of climate change. Some of them – such as higher food prices and the expense of building sea walls – are financial, but most take the form of costs which are generally seen as incalculable: the destruction of ecosystems and human communities; the displacement of people from their homes; disease and death. All these costs are thrown together by Sir Nicholas with a formula he calls “equivalent to a reduction in consumption”, to which he then attaches a price.

Stern explains that this “consumption” involves not just the consumption of goods we might buy from the supermarket, but also of “education, health and the environment.”(5) He admits that this formula “raises profound difficulties”, especially the “challenge of expressing health (including mortality) and environmental quality in terms of income”(6). But he uses it anyway, and discovers that the global disaster which would be unleashed by a 5-6° rise in temperature, and which is likely to involve widespread famine, is “equivalent to a reduction in consumption” of 5-20%.

It is true that as people begin to starve they will consume less. When they die they cease to consume altogether. But Stern’s unit (a reduction in consumption) incorporates everything from the price of baked beans to the pain of bereavement. He then translates it into a “social cost of carbon”, measured in dollars. He has, in other words, put a price on human life. Worse still, he has ensured that this price is buried among the other prices: when you read that the “social cost of carbon” is $30 a tonne, you don’t know – unless you unpick the whole report and its methodology and sources – how much of this is made of human lives.

The poorer people are, the cheaper their lives become. “For example,” Stern observes, “a very poor person may not be ‘willing-to-pay’ very much money to insure her life, whereas a rich person may be prepared to pay a very large sum. Can it be right to conclude that a poor person’s life or health is therefore less valuable?”(7) Up to a point, yes: income, he says, should be one of the measures used to determine the social cost of carbon. Sir Nicholas was by no means the first to use such a formula. What was new was the unthinking enthusiasm with which his approach was greeted.

Stern’s methodology has a disastrous consequence, unintended but surely obvious. His report shows that the dollar losses of failing to prevent a high degree of global warming outweigh the dollar savings arising from not taking action. It therefore makes economic sense to try to stop runaway climate change. But what if the result had been different? What if he had discovered that the profits to be made from burning more fossil fuels exceeded the social cost of carbon? We would then find that it makes economic sense to kill people.

This is what the government has done. Its consultation paper boasts that “our approach is entirely consistent with the Stern Review”(8). It has translated his “social cost of carbon” into a “shadow price of carbon”, which is currently valued, human lives and all, at £25 a tonne(9).

Against this is set the economic benefit of a new runway. Part of this benefit takes the form of shorter waiting times for passengers. The government claims that building a third runway will reduce delays, on average, by three minutes(10). This saving is costed at €38-49 per passenger per hour(11). The price is a function of the average net wages of travellers: the more you earn, the more the delays are deemed to cost you, even if you are on holiday.

Consider the implications. On one side of the equation human life is being costed. On the other side, the value of delays to passengers is being priced, and it rises according to their wealth. Convenience is weighed against human life. The richer you are, the more lives your time is worth.

The people most likely to be killed by climate change do not live in this country. Most of them live in Africa and South Asia. Hardly any of the economic benefits of expanding Heathrow accrue to them. Yet the government has calculated the economic benefits to the United Kingdom, weighed them against the global costs of climate change and discovered that sacrificing foreigners – especially poor ones – is a sensible economic decision.

I can accept that a unit of measurement which allows us to compare the human costs of different spending decisions is a useful tool. What I cannot accept is that it should be scrambled up with the price of eggs and prefixed with a dollar sign. Human life is not a commodity. It cannot be traded against profits or exchanged for convenience. We have no right to decide that others should die to make us richer.

References:

1. The net benefits are estimated at between £4.4bn and £5.2bn: Department for Transport, November 2007. Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport: Consultation Document, p74.

2. Department for Transport, November 2007. Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport: Consultation Document, p125. http://www.dft.gov.uk/162259/165220/302152/completecondoc.pdf

3. Bart Boon et al, February 2008. The economics of Heathrow expansion: Final report. CE Delft. http://www.hacan.org.uk/resources/reports/4504.final.report.pdf

4. Paul Ekins, 13th February 2008. Path of least resistance. The Guardian.

5. Sir Nicholas Stern, October 2006. The Economics of Climate Change. HM Treasury, Part 1, page 28. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics…

6. ibid, Part 1, page 30.

7. ibid, Part 1, page 30-31.

8. Department for Transport, ibid, p10.

9. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, December 2007. The Social Cost Of Carbon And The Shadow Price Of Carbon: What They Are, And How To Use Them In Economic Appraisal In The UK. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/research/carboncost/pd…

10. Department for Transport, November 2007. UK Air Passenger Demand and CO2 Forecasts, p128. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/aviation/environmentalissues/ukairdemandandco2…

11. Finding the figures on which the government based its benefit estimates was a struggle. The consultation document led me to the passenger demand forecast (see note 10), which in turn referenced this paper:

European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, 2005. Standard Inputs for EUROCONTROL Cost Benefit Analyses. http://www.eurocontrol.int/eatm/gallery/content/public/library/CBA-stand…

Rigged

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:22:38 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called … leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used.

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our TVs off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burnt.

Or perhaps I should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to extract as much as they can. Since 2000 the British government has given coal firms £220m to help them open new mines or to keep existing mines working(1). According to the energy white paper, the government intends to “maximise economic recovery … from remaining coal reserves.”(2)

The pit at Ffos-y-fran received planning permission after two ministers in the Westminster government jumped up and down on Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister in Wales. Stephen Timms at the department of trade and industry listed the benefits of the scheme and demanded that the application “is resolved with the minimum of further delay”(3). His successor, Mike O’Brien, warned of dire consequences if the pit was not granted permission(4). The coal extracted from Ffos-y-fran alone will produce 29.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide: equivalent, according to the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the sustainable emissions of 55m people for one year(5).

Last year British planning authorities considered twelve new applications for opencast coal mines. They approved all but two of them. Two weeks ago Hazel Blears, the secretary of state in charge of planning, overruled Northumberland County Council to grant permission for an opencast mine at Shotton, on the grounds that the scheme (which will produce 9.3m tonnes of CO2) is “environmentally acceptable”(7).

The British government also has a policy of “maximising the UK’s existing oil and gas reserves”(8). To promote new production, it has granted companies a 90% discount on the licence fees they pay for prospecting the continental shelf(9). It hopes the prospecting firms will open a new frontier in the seas to the west of the Shetland Isles(10). The government also has two schemes for “forcing unworked blocks back into play”(11). If oil companies don’t use their licences to the full, it revokes them and hands them to someone else. In other words it is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when preventing it: no minister talks of “forcing” companies to reduce their emissions. Ministers hope the industry will extract up to 28 billion barrels of oil and gas from the continental shelf(12).

Last week the government announced a new tax break for the companies working in the North Sea. The Treasury minister Angela Eagle explained that its purpose is “to make sure we are not leaving any oil in the ground that could be recovered.”(13) The government’s climate change policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray to God that no one uses it.

The same wishful thinking is applied worldwide. The International Energy Agency’s new outlook report warns that “urgent action is needed” to cut carbon emissions. The action it recommends is investing $22 trillion in new energy infrastructure, most of which will be spent on extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels(14).

Aha, you say, but what about carbon capture and storage? When governments use this term, they mean catching and burying the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. It is feasible, but there are three problems. The first is that fossil fuels are being extracted and burnt today, and scarcely any carbon capture schemes yet exist. The second is that the technology works only for power stations and large industrial processes: there is no plausible means of catching and storing emissions from cars, planes and heating systems. The third, as Alistair Darling, then in charge of energy, admitted in the House of Commons in May, is that the technologies required for commercial carbon capture “might never become available”(15). (The government is prepared to admit this when making the case – as Darling was – for nuclear power, but not when making the case for coal).

Almost every week I receive an email from someone asking what the heck I am talking about. Don’t I realise that peak oil will solve this problem for us? Fossil fuels will run out, we’ll go back to living in caves and no one will need to worry about climate change again. These correspondents make the mistake of conflating conventional oil supplies with all fossil fuels. Yes, at some point the production of petroleum will peak then go into decline. I don’t know when this will happen, and I urge environmentalists to remember that while we have been proved right about most things we have been consistently wrong about the dates for mineral exhaustion. But before oil peaks, demand is likely to outstrip supply and the price will soar. The result is that the oil firms will have an even greater incentive to extract the stuff.

Already, encouraged by recent prices, the pollutocrats are pouring billions into unconventional oil. Last week BP announced a massive investment in Canadian tar sands. Oil produced from tar sands creates even more carbon emissions than the extraction of petroleum. There’s enough tar and kerogen in North America to cook the planet several times over.

If that runs out they switch to coal, of which there is hundreds of years’ supply. Sasol, the South African company founded during the apartheid period (when supplies of oil were blocked) to turn coal into liquid transport fuel, is conducting feasibility studies for new plants in India, China and the US(16). Neither geology nor market forces is going to save us from climate change.

When you review the plans for fossil fuel extraction, the horrible truth dawns that every carbon-cutting programme on earth is a con. Without supply-side policies, runaway climate change is inevitable, however hard we try to cut demand. The talks in Bali will be meaningless unless they produce a programme for leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

References:

1. Under two schemes: Coal Investment Aid and the UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme. See Department of Trade and Industry, 2006. Coal Industry in the UK. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/coal/industry/page13125.html

and

DBERR, 2007. UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme: Coal Subsidy Programme / 823100 Cops0010 – Expenditure Profile by Tranche. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file34209.xls

2. Department of Trade and Industry, May 2007. Meeting the Energy Challenge: a white paper on energy. Para 4.07, page 107.

3. Stephen Timms MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 20th January 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

4. Mike O’Brien MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 14th December 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

5. The scheme will extract 10.8 million tonnes of coal. Average C/tonne of coal = 746kg (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html). CO2 is 3.667 times the weight of C. The figure for sustainable emissions – 0.537t/person/year – is explained in the column I wrote last week: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/04/what-is-progress/

6. 3.4 million tonnes of coal.

7. Banks Developments, 29th November 2007. Banks Group’s Shotton surface mine proposals approved. http://www.banksdevelopments.com/news/153/

8. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006. West of Shetland task force forge ahead into new year. http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=251607&NewsAr…

9. Under the “Frontier” and “Promote” licences. Department of Trade and Industry, 16th March 2006. Shake-up Of Unused Blocks Keeps Pressure On North Sea Exploration.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=191617&NewsAr…

10. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006, ibid.

11. Department of Trade and Industry, 1st February 2007. Oil is well under the North Sea.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=261127&NewsAr…

12. The formula they use is “oil equivalent”. Department of Trade and Industry, 6th September 2005. North Sea Licences Surge To All Time Record.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/content/detail.asp?ReleaseID=168865&NewsAreaID=2&N…

13. Quoted by Ed Crooks, 7th December 2007. Boost for North Sea Companies. Financial Times.

14. International Energy Agency, 2007. World Energy Outlook, 2007, Table 1.9, p95. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

15. Alastair Darling, 23rd May 2007. Parliamentary answer. Column 1289. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/c…

16. Ed Crooks, 9th November 2007. Pay-off time for Sasol pioneers? Financial Times.

What Is Progress?

JamieSW — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:47:14 +0000

When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, they call you a saint. When you explain what needs to be done to stop it, they call you a communist. Let me show you why.

There is now a broad scientific consensus that we need to prevent temperatures from rising by more than 2°C above their pre-industrial level. Beyond that point, the Greenland ice sheet could go into irreversible meltdown, some ecosystems collapse, billions suffer from water stress, droughts could start to threaten global food supplies(1,2).

The government proposes to cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. This target is based on a report published in 2000(3). That report was based on an assessment published in 1995, which drew on scientific papers published a few years earlier. The UK’s policy, in other words, is based on papers some 15 years old. Our target, which is one of the toughest on earth, bears no relation to current science.

Over the past fortnight, both Gordon Brown and his adviser Sir Nicholas Stern have proposed raising the cut to 80%(4,5). Where did this figure come from? The last G8 summit adopted the aim of a global cut of 50% by 2050, which means that 80% would be roughly the UK’s fair share. But the G8’s target isn’t based on current science either.

In the new summary published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), you will find a table which links different cuts to likely temperatures(6). To prevent global warming from eventually exceeding 2°, it suggests, by 2050 the world needs to cut its emissions to roughly 15% of the volume in 2000.

I looked up the global figures for carbon dioxide production in 2000(7) and divided it by the current population(8). This gives a baseline figure of 3.58 tonnes of CO2 per person. An 85% cut means that (if the population remains constant) the global output per head should be reduced to 0.537t by 2050. The UK currently produces 9.6 tonnes per head and the US 23.6t(9,10). Reducing these figures to 0.537t means a 94.4% cut in the UK and a 97.7% cut in the US. But the world population will rise in the same period. If we assume a population of 9bn in 2050(11), the cuts rise to 95.9% in the UK and 98.3% in the US.

The IPCC figures might also be out of date. In a footnote beneath the table, the panel admits that “emission reductions … might be underestimated due to missing carbon cycle feedbacks”. What this means is that the impact of the biosphere’s response to global warming has not been fully considered. As seawater warms, for example, it releases carbon dioxide. As soil bacteria heat up, they respire more, generating more CO2. As temperatures rise, tropical forests die back, releasing the carbon they contain. These are examples of positive feedbacks. A recent paper (all the references are on my website) estimates that feedbacks account for about 18% of global warming(12). They are likely to intensify.

A paper in Geophysical Research Letters finds that even with a 90% global cut by 2050, the 2° threshold “is eventually broken”(13). To stabilise temperatures at 1.5° above the pre-industrial level requires a global cut of 100%. The diplomats who started talks in Bali yesterday should be discussing the complete decarbonisation of the global economy.

It is not impossible. In a previous article I showed how by switching the whole economy over to the use of electricity and by deploying the latest thinking on regional supergrids, grid balancing and energy storage, you could run almost the entire energy system on renewable power(14). The major exception is flying (don’t expect to see battery-powered jetliners) which suggests that we should be closing rather than opening runways.

This could account for around 90% of the necessary cut. Total decarbonisation demands that we go further. Preventing 2° of warming means stripping carbon dioxide from the air. The necessary technology already exists(15): the challenge is making it efficient and cheap. Last year Joshuah Stolaroff, who has written a PhD on the subject, sent me some provisional costings, of £256-458 per tonne of carbon(16,17). This makes the capture of CO2 from the air roughly three times as expensive as the British government’s costings for building wind turbines, twice as expensive as nuclear power, slightly cheaper than tidal power and 8 times cheaper than rooftop solar panels in the UK(18). But I suspect his figures are too low, as they suggest this method is cheaper than catching CO2 from purpose-built power stations(19), which cannot be true(20).

The Kyoto Protocol, whose replacement the Bali meeting will discuss, has failed. Since it was signed, there has been an acceleration in global emissions: the rate of CO2 production exceeds the IPCC’s worst case and is now growing faster than at any time since the beginning of the industrial revolution(21). It’s not just the Chinese. A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that “no region is decarbonizing its energy supply”(22). Even the age-old trend of declining energy intensity as economies mature has gone into reverse(23). In the UK there is a stupefying gulf between the government’s climate policy and the facts it is creating on the ground. How will we achieve even a 60% cut if we build new coal plants, new roads and a third runway at Heathrow?

Underlying the immediate problem is a much greater one. In a lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering in May, Professor Rod Smith of Imperial College explained that a growth rate of 3% means economic activity doubles in 23 years(24). At 10% it takes just 7 years. This we knew. But Smith takes it further. With a series of equations he shows that “each successive doubling period consumes as much resource as all the previous doubling periods combined.” In other words, if our economy grows at 3% between now and 2030, we will consume in that period economic resources equivalent to all those we have consumed since humans first stood on two legs. Then, between 2030 and 2053, we must double our total consumption again. Reading that paper I realised for the first time what we are up against.

But I am not advocating despair. We must confront a challenge which is as great and as pressing as the rise of the Axis powers. Had we thrown up our hands then, as many people are tempted to do today, you would be reading this paper in German. Though the war often seemed impossible to win, when the political will was mobilised strange and implausible things began to happen. The US economy was spun round on a dime in 1942 as civilian manufacturing was switched to military production(25). The state took on greater powers than it had exercised before. Impossible policies suddenly became achievable.

The real issues in Bali are not technical or economic. The crisis we face demands a profound philosophical discussion, a reappraisal of who we are and what progress means. Debating these matters makes us neither saints nor communists; it shows only that we have understood the science.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. See, for example, IPCC, 2007. Climate change and its impacts in the near and long term under different scenarios. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_topic3.pdf and:

2. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Editor in chief), 2006. Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. http://www.defra.gov.uk/ENVIRONMENT/climatechange/research/dangerous-cc/...

3. Royal Commission On Environmental Pollution, June 2000. Energy – the Changing Climate. http://www.rcep.org.uk/newenergy.htm

4. Gordon Brown, 19th November 2007. Speech on Climate Change. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page13791.asp

5. Sir Nicholas Stern, 30th November 2007. Bali: now the rich must pay. The Guardian.

6. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Fourth Assessment Report. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers, Table SPM.6. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

7. All the following figures are for CO2 from the burning and flaring of fossil fuel. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

8. Currently 6,635m. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

9. The latest figures are for 2005. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

10. Population figures for 2005 came from http://www.prb.org/pdf05/05WorldDataSheet_Eng.pdf

11. This is a conservative assumption.

12. Josep G. Canadell et al. 25th October 2007. Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0702737104

13. Andrew J. Weaver et al, 6th October 2007. Long term climate implications of 2050 emission reduction targets. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, L19703. doi:10.1029/2007GL031018, 2007

14. George Monbiot, 3rd July 2007. A Sudden Change of State. The Guardian.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/03/a-sudden-change-of-state

15. Frank Zeman, 26th September 2007. Energy and Material Balance of CO2 Capture from Ambient Air. Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 41, No. 21, pp7558-7563. 10.1021/es070874m

16. Stolaroff’s figures are $140-250/US ton-CO2. I have converted them into £/metric tonne-C. The weight of CO2 is 3.667x that of C.

17. You can read his PhD here: http://wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/theses/Joshuah_Stolaroff_PhD_Thesis_20…

18. Department of Trade and Industry (now the DBERR), 2003. Energy White Paper – Supplementary Annexes, p7. www.dti.gov.uk/energy/whitepaper/annexes.pdf

19. The DBERR gives figures for C savings through capture-ready power stations of £460-560/tC.

20. It cannot be true because the concentration of CO2 in thermal power station effluent is many times higher than that in ambient air.

21. Josep G. Canadell et al, ibid.

22. Michael R. Raupach et al, 12th June 2007. Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol.104, no. 24. Pp 10288–10293. www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0700609104

23. ibid.

24. Roderick A Smith, 29th May 2007. Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Carpe Diem: The dangers of risk aversion. Reprinted in Civil Engineering Surveyor, October 2007.

25. Jack Doyle, 2000. Taken for a Ride: Detroit’s big three and the politics of pollution, pp1-2. Four Walls, Eight Windows, New York.

Global warming will push Asia into reverse, as UK leadership fades

JamieSW — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:51:19 +0000

The biggest study yet from the unique coalition of major UK poverty and environment groups reveals scale of climate impacts on international work -and says immediate action needed before Asia goes ‘Up in Smoke’?

The report – Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific – with a foreword by Dr R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – says that without immediate action, global warming is set to reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, home to over 60 per cent of the world’s population. The report is published in the wake of evidence that the UK is reneging on targets for renewable energy set to tackle climate change.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific is the most extensive and concluding chapter of a unique, four-year long exercise by the Up in Smoke coalition – an alliance of the UK’s major environment and development groups. Four years ago, the coalition set out to assess the impacts of climate change on efforts toward poverty reduction around the world from the point of view of practical, community-based organisations engaged in designing responses to a changing environment.

This, the latest and most comprehensive report from communities around the world on the front line of climate change catalogues the threat climate change poses to human development, and the growing consequences of inaction on the issue. It shows how, across Asia, people and communities are already acting to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. But the report says, there is not a moment to lose. Unless a decisive international agreement is reached, and soon, the lives of those living on the front line of climate change will go up in smoke.

As world leaders prepare for the next UN talks to determine the international response to climate change, in Bali at the beginning of December, Up in Smoke: Asia and the Pacific, shows how the human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where almost two thirds of the world’s population live, effectively on the front line of climate change.

The report highlights, for example, that:

In the summer of 2007, British aid agencies, including those in the Up in Smoke alliance, had to raise funds from the UK public to go towards assisting up to 28 million people affected by flooding in South Asia. Extreme weather events like this are likely to become more frequent.

Over half of the population of Asia live near the coast, making them directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by global warming.

Asia is home to 87 per cent of the world’s known 400 million small farms – all especially vulnerable to climate change as they rely on regular and reliable rainfall.

Drought in north China has increased, ruining the livelihoods of the region’s farmers. And, around 8 out of 10 glaciers in western China are reportedly in retreat due to climate change.

The latest global scientific consensus indicates that all of Asia is set to warm during this century, and that this will be accompanied by less predictable and more extreme patterns of rainfall. Tropical cyclones are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency across the region, while monsoons, around which farming systems are designed, are expected to become more unpredictable in their strength and time of onset.
The expansion of biofuel crops linked to deforestation could, instead of being a climate friendly alternative to fossil fuels, actually worsen global warming and harm local livelihoods and the environment.

Communities living on small island states like Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu, scattered across thousands of square kilometres of ocean in the Pacific, among the least responsible globally for climate change, have already fallen victim to the impacts of climate change. Entire nations are now at risk.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, presents the results of an unprecedented consultation by members of the coalition among grass roots groups across Asia and the Pacific and including within China – presenting a unique body of evidence direct from the front line of climate change, and an urgent call to action from global leaders.

As officials in the UK continue to work behind the scenes to evade the UK governments commitments to renewable energy, the report catalogues the impact that climate change is already having on some of the worlds most vulnerable communities – just last month, a reported 5 million people were affected when a typhoon struck the south- east coast of China.

The report also presents new evidence that the ‘silver bullet’ of biofuels could turn into a rush for ‘fools gold’ across Asia as huge social and environmental costs outweigh the benefits, substantiating concerns already raised by aid and environment groups, and scientists.

Indonesia has some six million hectares of land under oil palm and the Government is actively encouraging further expansion. As a result of deforestation, some of which is for palm oil plantations, Indonesia is the third-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after the USA and China.

Deforestation is already the second-largest contributor to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Deforestation to make way for large-scale mono-cropping obliterates the ‘green credentials’ of biofuels by actually increasing the amount of emissions rather than reducing them.

The economic attraction of biofuels is also leading to conflict between crops grown for food and those grown for fuel. Increasingly, the result is expected to be both greater competition for land and higher food prices.

Pledging once again to play their part in trying to halt dangerous climate change and to help bring about a global solution that is fair and rooted in human equality, amongst a range of recommendations detailed in the report, the coalition calls on the international community to urgently:

Cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rich countries, both historically and today, are disproportionately responsible for the emissions that have caused and still fuel climate change. As such, they need to meet and exceed their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set under the Kyoto Protocol. Starting now with deep annual cuts, commitments should be introduced progressively in a way that prevents a dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases and puts industrialised countries on track to reach cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050.
Halt forest clearance to contain biofuel expansion. Conduct an urgent assessment of carbon benefits from different fuels as well as assessing their impacts on biodiversity especially in intact forests, carbon release from peatlands, as well as impacts on the food security and traditional livelihoods of local populations.

Draw up coordinated plans, from local to international levels, for relocating threatened communities with appropriate political, legal and financial resources. New problems are emerging. For example, as some nations lose land, a way to deal with threats to Exclusive Economic Zones, and appropriate compensation funding, need to be developed. Resources, too, will need to target the appropriate level of government with whom the responsibility to care for environmental refugees will fall.

In particular, the coalition calls on the UK government to set an example for countries like China and India by:

Committing to mandatory emissions reductions. As an absolute minimum, the UK Climate Change Bill, currently passing through parliament must lock-in mandatory year on year emissions reductions for the UK, setting carbon budgets for 3-5 year periods, to ensure that the UK does its part in keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.
Keeping its commitments to renewable energy. Recent evidence revealed the UK government’s attempts to evade binding targets on renewable energy. Across Asia, the potential for sustainable and renewable energy is vast, and the market, especially in poor communities frequently unable to gain power from large grid systems, is huge. But the temptation to exploit easily available fossil fuels is equally high. Countries like the UK need to set strong domestic examples by championing renewable energy – if countries in Asia are to be convinced not to go down the fossil fuel energy route of ‘get rich quick, stay poor long.’ India, for example, could provide 60 per cent of its total electricity supply by 2050 using renewables.

Enable the transfer of environmentally friendly technology, where appropriate and requested, by ending the use of restrictive laws governing intellectual property.

There is growing consensus about the current human and environmental challenges facing Asia, and what is needed to tackle them. There is already enough knowledge and understanding to know what the main causes

Alongside new evidence of the devastating impact that climate change is already having on communities across Asia, Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, shows positive measures that are already being taken – by governments, by civil society and by local people – to reduce the causes of climate change and to overcome its effects. It shows examples of emissions reduction; alternative water and energy supply systems; preservation of strategic ecosystems and protected areas; increasing capacity, awareness and skills for risk and disaster management; and the employment of effective regulatory and policy instruments. The challenge is clear and many of the solutions are known: the point is, to act.